Executive Actions by Gary Grossman Page B

amassed by the CIA and is dispatched to do some “dirty work” around the world.
    The DIA turns out “agents no one talks about.” They’ve deployed clandestine spies in the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Pakistan, Russia and China. They are drawn from Army, Navy and Air Force soldiers who have “volunteered” through the good graces of observers like Miller.
    DIA ran their operations under a unit known as Defense Humint Service. In spy language, Humint stands for human intelligence —the kind of data that is collected by agents on the ground.
    Reporters who dig deep enough to confirm the existence of the DIA’s efforts barely scratch the surface. The Pentagon only admits to having retooled some separate intelligence programs run by the numerous services into one. And yet, it is a fully functional, impressively managed operation which outnumbers the CIA analysts by nearly 10 to 1.
    Early in their history, Humint teams scored some impressive successes in the field. In the 1990’s, DIA officers bought parts of a Russian SA-10 air defense missile system from the former Soviet republic of Belarus. The result of the procurement allowed the U.S. Air Force to better evade Russian radar.
    A few years earlier they participated in the capture of an officer in the command structure of Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid.
    In the mid 1980s, Army intelligence officers unearthed a North Korean division that spy satellites had missed. The Army also fractured an agreement that Iraq forged with China to build a nuclear reactor.
    The barely supervised super secret agents of the Pentagon worked in concert with the CIA, which gets most of the attention and all of the credit. And that was just the way Roarke liked it then and now.
    Attention was bad. Credit, he didn’t need. People who remembered faces could kill you. So he shunned being photographed; always trying very hard to blend into his surroundings.
    Now, as the most trusted member of PD16, a unit of the Secret Service not unlike DIA, Roarke knew the faith Morgan Taylor placed in him. Yet, even to most friends, he passed himself off as merely another lowly member of the President’s walking bullet stoppers, when, in truth, he was much more.
     
    Roarke picked up the newspaper from the health club floor. The news was definitely not good. He considered it might be time to think about a radical sabbatical. After all, at age thirty-six, he was becoming an old man in a young man’s business.
    However, depending upon the election results in November, that decision might be made for him. He could have a considerable amount of time on his hands and a government retirement package waiting at the back door.
    Hell, he wondered. Maybe I should just vote against the boss and help save myself a lot of grief.
    He flung The New York Times back onto the health club floor and returned to spinning. He had ninety minutes before he had to be at the White House.

CHAPTER
9

Tripoli, Libya
The same day
    A bahar Kharrazi read the International Herald Tribune . It carried Michael O’Connell’s story from The Times . Halfway through he shook his head in disgust. What an appalling shot . If this gunman had worked for him, he’d have him thrown into Abu Salim Prison, tortured and then left to contemplate his failure for the rest of his miserable life. It was the kind of cruel streak that seemed to run in the family.
The White House
1030 hrs
    “This better be important. I was working on my self image,” Roarke joked as he entered the Oval Office.
    “Most people would open with, ‘Hello, Mr. President.’”
    “Hi, boss,” Roarke managed.
    “Here, have some water. Sit down and shut up,” the president said going to his refrigerator.
    Morgan Taylor knew he had Roarke’s respect. And it went way beyond the presidency. Roarke loved his country. It’s just that the accoutrements of the White House didn’t affect him. Morgan Taylor’s judgement did, however. That was the subject of today’s